The seminal account of the battle between MontgomeryOs Eighth Army and RommelOs Afrika Corps, amidst the endless harsh wastes of the Western Desert. In 1940, Alan Moorehead was sent to cover the North Africa campaign by the Daily Express, and he followed its dramatic course all the way to 1943. The three books he subsequently wrote about the Desert War O later collected as his NAfrican TrilogyO O were swiftly acclaimed as a classic account of the tussle between MontgomeryOs Eighth Army and RommelOs Afrika Corps, under the beating sun of the Egyptian Sahara's Western Desert. Moorehead was responsible for the celebrated insight that tank battles in the desert are like battles at sea, the lumbering tanks like ships lost in a vast ocean of sand. The New Statesman could not have put it better when it described his achievement with this riveting book: NThere is something of genius in the breadth and penetration of his vision, which encompasses the whole panorama of war and then narrows it down to the particular: the soldier stubbing out his cigarette before going into action, the expression on a tank commanderOs face as he is hitA The story of the African campaigns will go down in history as one of the great epics of mankind, largely thanks to Mr MooreheadOs account.O